It seems like we haven’t yet done enough to humiliate and push around welfare recipients. Not that there is that much welfare to receive but those fuckers need to pay for every little crumb we deign to throw them.
Public housing will now be smoke-free. I know that many people will get stuck on their typically American need to police smokers and won’t be able to absorb any further information or consider that this measure will necessitate intruding into people’s homes because they don’t deserve privacy if they have accepted public assistance.
But hey, it stands to reason. We have already invaded the bodies of welfare recipients with drug tests, policing of their shopping carts, controlling their physical and leisure authority, so why not this? Haven’t we bought the right to condescend to them and control them with our charity? What’s the point of even having public assistance if we can’t use it to turn its recipients into our private property?
P.S. Can I please be spared the boring lecture on the evils of smoking in the comments? The subject of the post is completely different, and if you are not seeing that, please discuss this with your therapist.
Clarissa's Blog 
Well in a culture very strongly informed by Northern European protestantism (like the US) welfare is a hard sell unless it’s serving some purpose beyond keeping people from being homeless and/or hungry.
Needing welfare in the first place, in such an environment, is a kind of confession of incompetence and so those providing money feel the need to engage recipients didactically. The government can’t make them go to church (anymore) so have to find new ways to preach at them.
And in the larger scheme this is just one more screwed up thing in a large panoply of scrwed up things about welfare payments in the US.
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And in collapse of the nation state news, a great quote:
“Are the State and I now in agreement that our mutual contract is being renegotiated?”
Said by a woman who was told by the (Swedish) police that they weren’t going to investigate a robbery at her home because all their resources are being directed to migrants.
http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/6865/sweden-anarchy
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““Are the State and I now in agreement that our mutual contract is being renegotiated?””
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